In an appeal to catalyze how 18-year-olds in India engage with the world, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi to launch a new campaign called #PowerOf18. The event, which lasted an hour and was streamed live on Periscope, ended with a cheeky question from one person (that really stood for a lot of us whenever we got frustrated with a typo or two in our tweets): when will we get an “Edit” button?
Dorsey has had a few thoughts about the conundrum of the button in relation to what he views as Twitter’s responsibility to showcase a public record as it is.
The “use cases” of an edit button are to correct mistakes — most of them are typos or URL copies, harmless or otherwise, while others may involve the correction of a narrative that would misrepresent what the person originally posted.
That latter case is especially harmful when a tweet either becomes popular or is recognized, liked and/or retweeted.
“So, we’ve been considering edit for quite some time,” Dorsey remarked. “But we have to do it the right way. We can’t just rush it out.”
To its credit, Twitter restored a chronological feed to mobile users weeks ago, something that was in high demand from a vocal group of frequent users.